The Voice in the Fog

He had put forward this condition, perfectly sure that she would refuse

to accept it. He could not understand.

"You accept that condition?"

"Yes." Having gone thus far with her plot, Kitty would have died

rather than retreated; Irish temperament.

Thomas was moved to a burst of confidence. "I know that I am poor, and

to the best of my belief, honest. Moreover, perhaps I should be

compelled by the exigencies of circumstance to leave you after a few

months. I am not a rich man, masquerading for the sport of it; I am

really poor and grateful for any work. It is only fair that I should

tell you this much, that I am running away from no one. Beyond the

fact that I am the son of a very great but unknown scholar, a farmer of

mediocre talents who lost his farm because he dreamed of humanity

instead of cabbages, I have nothing to say." He said it gravely,

without pride or veiled hauteur.

"That is frank enough," replied Kitty, curiously stirred. "You will

not find us hard task-masters. Be here this afternoon at three. My

father will wish to talk to you. And be as frank with him as you have

been with me."

She smiled and nodded brightly, and turned away. He had a glimpse of a

tan shoe and a slim tan-silk ankle, which poised birdlike above the

high doorsill; and then she vanished into the black shadow of the

companionway. She afterward confessed to me that her sensation must

have been akin to that of a boy who had stolen an apple and beaten the

farmer in the race to the road.

We all make the mistake of searching for our drama, forgetting that it

arrives sooner or later, unsolicited.

Bewitched. Thomas should have been the happiest man alive, but the

devil had recruited him for his miserables. Her piquant face no longer

confronting and bewildering him, he saw this second net into which he

had permitted himself to be drawn. As if the first had not been

colossal enough! Where would it all end? Private secretary and two

hundred the month--forty pounds--this was a godsend. But to take her

orders day by day, to see her, to be near her. . . . Poverty-stricken

wretch that he was, he should have declined. Now he could not; being a

simple Englishman, he had given his word and meant to abide by it.

There was one glimmer of hope; her father. He was a practical merchant

and would not permit a man without a past (often worse than a man with

one) to enter his establishment.